Peter Bedlek

“After the so-called ‘čepobitie’, such a military music march in Bohemia, there was an evening assessment around nine or nine-thirty. There were line-ups or full combat gear readiness, and the assessment was carried out according to what was the order like. I don’t want to go into details, since you know it from the stories already, but there was a lot of swearing and jawing. They called us different names – traitors, enemies, and so on. It was everywhere. And those political workers, officers, ranked as second lieutenants or such, always viewed us as enemies and traitors. If one was somewhere later on, he mustn’t have said he belonged to the PTP or that he owned black shoulder loops. This way he would’ve revealed the military secret.”

“The Germans needed to find out, whether there were partisans in Lomná. So they took a motorcycle, on the ‘side’ holding a machine gun, and they went to Lomná. My brother’s friend was just returning home from Lomná; it was about eight or nine o’clock in the morning. The Germans stopped him and asked if there were partisans in Lomná. He said there weren’t, so they went on, remembering this young guy. However, as they came up, at one road curve, there were partisans in a house. One German was shot dead, the other one managed to save himself and run away. But these Germans remembered the young boy, searched for him, and found him. He was my brother’s friend. They took him to interrogation, roping his hands behind their horses. There were seven men marching to Námestovo, where the headquarters was. They dragged him, but I don’t know how he managed to arrive there. There was a road to Námestovo by our house, so we had such experience.”